In various contexts or situations, requirements exist to the effect that a specific group of people cannot discuss certain topics or subject matter in private. Often these requirements arise out of regulations that are designed to protect the public's right to be informed about certain matters. For example, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has enacted the Open Meeting Law (“OML”) (Massachusetts General Laws—Chapter 39, Section 23B), which governs the behavior of all state and municipal boards. As in many such regulations, the provisions of the OML prohibit a quorum of board members from meeting and deliberating on matters of public business in private, i.e. outside of duly posted and constituted public board meetings. The Massachusetts Attorney General and the courts have interpreted this law to apply to so-called “serial quorums” or “revolving door” meetings, in which a quorum of members participates in a serial fashion, e.g. one member discussing public business with other board members one at a time, but never actually with a concurrent quorum deliberating. See Open Meeting Law Guidelines, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Office of the Attorney General, page 26. It is likely that similar interpretations are or will be made with regard to other similar regulations intended to protect the public's right to be informed about matters of public interest.
Problems have arisen due to the fact that regulations such as the OML were written before the widespread adoption of the Internet, and accordingly before the existence of popular communication channels provided over the Internet, including synchronous communication applications such as Internet chat rooms, Web conferences, electronic meetings, etc., and also including asynchronous communication applications such as electronic mail, on-line discussion forums, and others. For example, in Massachusetts, the issue of the applicability of these regulations to on-line communications has recently been raised in the press, and with the Middlesex District Attorney. It has generally been acknowledged that a quorum of board members deliberating board business via private email is impermissible, as well as discussion by a quorum of members within a closed, on-line discussion forum.
Existing systems have fallen significantly short of providing an effective solution to these problems. For example, a prohibition could be applied to an entire class of persons preventing them from participating in all electronic communications. However, this simplistic approach would be overly restrictive, since it prevents many legal and useful communications from occurring. Another possible solution would require automatic logging of all users that participate in a chat room or forum, etc., so that if someone later alleges an violation, it can be more easily investigated. This approach, however, does not prevent the problem from occurring in the first place, or give participants fair warning to avoid an inadvertent prohibited contact.
United States published patent application US20030236751A1, entitled “Method and Apparatus for Managing Conflicts of Interest During the Selection of Legal and Legal-Related Service Providers”, describes a method for avoiding conflicts of interest when a client submits a request for proposals (“RFP”) to a pool of legal service providers. By having the clients list their opponents, and the service providers list their clients, a host system in US20030236751A1 can prevent an RFP from being viewed by a service provider who might have a potential conflict of interest with the client that posted the RFC. However, the teachings of US20030236751A1 are narrowly directed to this specific purpose, and include no teaching or suggestion of dealing with the concept of a quorum, such that one or more specified persons may participate in the electronic communications channel, but not a full quorum.
In the context of on-line voting systems (e.g. as found at http://www.votenet.com), software is used to verify quorum requirements for voting. Some such systems can verify that a minimum number or percentage of votes from qualified classes of people are cast before a ballot can give valid results. These types of existing systems are designed for use in holding elections, and not for online communications systems such as instant messaging, email, discussion forums, etc. Additionally, existing on-line voting systems also include no techniques for preventing online communications that cause a serial quorum to occur, and are instead concerned with validating participation of voters in an on-line vote.
Some other existing systems have enforced quotas and other mechanisms for limiting concurrent access to a system resource. For example, such an existing system might limit the number users that can be concurrently logged onto an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) site. Another such system for a telephone-based customer service line may allow only a limited number of people to be added to a waiting queue, and cause any callers beyond that limit get a busy signal. These types of systems are intended to bound costs, limit system resource utilization, and to ensure minimum service levels to system users. However, these existing systems are limited to access restrictions on concurrent access by users, and fail to address cases of serial access, e.g. via asynchronous communication channels, such as on-line discussion forums. Also, in the area of synchronous communication mechanisms, these existing systems include no provision for determining a number of users relevant to quorum based not only on the number of concurrent board members or the like that are presently chatting, but also on the number of such special users which have been chatting. Accordingly there is no way to address concerns relating to detection and prevention of serial quorums with regard to synchronous communication channels.
For the above reasons and others, it would be desirable to have a new system for controlling the use of electronic communication systems that allows a specific class of user, such as board members or the like, to conveniently use online communications, but that also effectively prevents inadvertent violations of public meeting and similar regulations.